Those who chat with chatbots, those who create “lovers” for themselves using AI, those who confide their problems to ChatGPT… We are the ones who imbue technology with emotional meaning. Even though we’re dealing with software, we attribute human emotions like understanding and love to it. Perhaps what makes thriller films like Ex-Machina and M3GAN—which explore technology and AI—so unsettling is precisely this: the fact that AI is a system built to mimic human interactions.
In today’s world, where the line between humans and robots is growing increasingly blurred, the concept of the “Uncanny Valley” (The Uncanny Valley), first proposed by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in the 1970s, takes on a whole new meaning. This concept describes the fear, anxiety, and unease felt toward objects that resemble humans but are not quite human. According to one theory, this emotion—which emerged from an evolutionary process aimed at distinguishing between humans and non-humans—corresponds to the fear and unease felt toward robots and artificial intelligence today. Mori explains that while sympathy is evoked when robots resemble humans to a certain extent, they trigger strong negative emotions when they reach a level where they are very similar to humans but not fully human.
The “Uncanny Valley” effect has now evolved beyond mere physical resemblance to humans and can now apply to similarities in human behavior or intelligence. This means that the artificial intelligences we interact with no longer appear only as human-like faces but as minds capable of empathy, making jokes, and exhibiting emotional responses. It is precisely at this point that the Uncanny Valley shifts from physical resemblance to mental and emotional resemblance. When the entity before us is neither a complete machine nor a real human, the relationship we form with it carries an unsettling ambiguity.
But is it really that important for a machine to be capable of genuinely feeling the emotions it reflects back to us? Or is it enough for it simply to convince us of the existence of that emotion? Our inability to answer these questions necessitates an examination of the Uncanny Valley concept within the context of artificial intelligence.
